For a generation of Nova Scotians, the Edward Cornwallis statue debate has been stuck in a Groundhog’s Day loop of argument and counter-argument.

Here’s my plan for how we get past that in 2016.

First, let’s approach the discussion with an attitude of love and respect. I spent a year researching Cornwallis before publishing Cornwallis: The Violent Birth of Halifax in 2013. I’ve spent the last three years giving public talks across Nova Scotia and, more importantly, listening to people.

From the small group who attended my rainy-night talk in Bridgewater, to the hundreds who came out at the Rockingham Historical Society, the vast majority wants to find a way forward that respects both Mi’kmaq and European culture in this land.

Let’s build on that common ground.

Second, let’s just admit that the debate is not about the man who was born in England in 1713, spent a long career in the British military and civil service, and then died on Gibraltar in 1776. He’s dead.

The debate is about a statue and about how we talk about Mi’kmaq and European histories in this land.

The statue of Edward Cornwallis was built in 1931. The statue drive was led by a man called Archibald MacMechan, a Dalhousie professor. MacMechan wrote that “men of English blood all the world over are accustomed to feel and give voice to a just pride in the achievements of their race, as a colonizing power.” MacMechan called Cornwallis a “true patriot,” sharply contrasted to the “wild Indians” whom he described as “children of the forest.”

Cornwallis, he argued, fought off the “native race, whose cruelty and cunning were a proverb.”

Back then, ideas of race, racial purity and white supremacy were common and rarely challenged. Out west, Tommy Douglas argued for eugenics via the forced sterilization of people with “sub-normal” intelligence.

Halifax city council gave $2,500 out of the public purse to pay for the $20,000 statue. Cornwallis Park was designed to compel all visitors to walk toward the statue and pass under its feet.

In 1993, Dan Paul published We Were Not the Savages and suddenly we heard a loud and clear Mi’kmaq perspective on Cornwallis. The Chronicle-Herald made it front-page news and letter writers 23 years ago argued it was “ludicrous to blame those living today for events of 200 to 300 years ago” and another said “we shouldn’t rewrite history.”

A small group of people still repeat those arguments every time Cornwallis’s name comes up, and still fail to understand we’re not talking about the past — we’re talking about the present and the future.

I’ve yet to see anyone defend the statue on the grounds the statue was raised by. I’ve yet to read anyone make the case on the grounds that Cornwallis represents something that Halifax wants to honour today by literally keeping him on a pedestal.

We’ve rightly rejected the widespread racism of the 1930s. It’s time to take down the statue. For many, many people, the statue is a hurtful tribute to a Canada that sought to eradicate Mi’kmaq people first physically through the scalping proclamation and then, when that failed, culturally through the residential schools, the reserve system, and many other tools.

Today’s Mi’kmaq millennials are likely the first generation since Canada was founded that do not have a government actively trying to destroy their culture.

We have the truth. It’s time for the reconciliation.

Moving the statue to a museum will make life better in Nova Scotia. First, it’ll allow Edward Cornwallis to speak freely. As we’ll see next week, we’ll learn some surprising things about him, and about the world he emerged from.

Second, it’ll greatly enrich life for white Nova Scotians by introducing them to the power of what the Mi’kmaq call two-eyed seeing. We’ll look at that in the third and final column.

Jon Tattrie is the author of Cornwallis: The Violent Birth of Halifax.